“… While jobs in places like Buffalo were vanishing, Washington was coming to resemble a gilded city of lobbyists, contractors and lawmakers. In 2014 , the median wealth of members of Congress reached $1 million, about 18 times that of the typical American household, according to disclosures tabulated by the Center for Responsible politics. During the same year, real hourly wages remained flat or fell for nearly All American workers.

Ed McMullen, a public relations executive who worked for the Conservative American Heritage Foundation in the 1980s, watched the gulf widen between the Washington establishment and the working people in his home state, South Carolina.

‘Thirty years later, the same people are sitting in Washington that I worked with, making a million a year, going to fancy dinner parties, and they’ve done nothing to move the ball,’ said Mr. McMullen, who has joined the Trump campaign. ‘Therein lies the great chasm between the think tanks, the ideologues and the real world.”